I wish to thank John Brackett, Kristen Turner, and the anonymous readers who made valuable comments on early drafts of this article.
- In brief, the “Muscle Shoals sound” represents a sound, a recording process, and a marketing term. During the 1960s, many record labels and regions were identified with a particular “sound”—the “Motown sound,” the “Stax sound,” or the “Bakersfield (California) sound.” As a marketing term, the phrase “Muscle Shoals sound” does not appear in print until 1969, after Jimmy Johnson, Roger Hawkins, David Hood, and Barry Beckett open their recording studio named Muscle Shoals Sound. In 1969, Hall characterized the “Muscle Shoals sound” as “funky, hard, gutty, down to earth. It’s warm and heartfelt with a dance beat. No gimmicks or sound tricks.” Hall, however, consistently relied on the use of echo to enhance the spatial characteristics of recordings made at FAME, which is a “sound trick.” (Other studios also relied on echo.) For a detailed analysis of the “Muscle Shoals sound,” see Christopher M. Reali, “Making Music in Muscle Shoals” (PhD diss., University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, 2014), 41–124. The Hall quote is from Newsweek, “Muscling In,” September 15, 1969, 90; David Hood interview with Christopher Reali, May 24, 2011. Unless indicated otherwise, all quotes by Hood are from this interview.
- For more information on the recording process at Stax, see Robert M. Bowman, “The Stax Sound: A Musicological Analysis,” Popular Music 14, no. 3 (1995): 285–320. For information about the recording process at Motown, see Andrew Flory, I Hear a Symphony: Motown and Crossover r&b, University of Michigan Press (forthcoming). Andy generously shared the manuscript with me in advance of its publication; “Complete Press Kit,” accessed May 7, 2015, http://www.magpictures.com/presskit.aspx?id=827e9dcf-98b7-4b01-a504-81bdf2f9acb7. “The Swampers” collectively refers to Jimmy Johnson, Roger Hawkins, David Hood, and Barry Beckett. When Johnson, Hawkins, Hood, and Beckett opened their own studio in 1969, they christened themselves the Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section. Several years after their studio opened, they were given the nickname “The Swampers,” which was immortalized in the 1974 Lynyrd Skynyrd song “Sweet Home Alabama.” This group of musicians was never referred to as The Swampers while working for Rick Hall at FAME. In April 2015, Hall published an autobiography, The Man from Muscle Shoals: My Journey from Shame to Fame (Monterey, CA: Heritage Builders Publishing, 2015). This source, however, was published as this article went to press.
- Information about native tribes who inhabited the Shoals can be found in William Lindsey McDonald, Lore of the River: the Shoals of Long Ago, 3rd ed. (Florence, AL: Bluewater Publications, 2007). The city of Florence provides information about the Florence Indian Mound online. See “Native American, Florence Indian Mound and Museum,” accessed April 13, 2011, http://www.visitflorenceal.com/attractions/native-american; William Lindsey McDonald, Lore of the River. This quote appears in “The Singing River Mythology at the Shoals,” located on the back cover of the book; Terry Pace and Robert Palmer, “Moved by the Spirit,” Times Daily, August 1, 1999, 2. Pace generously gave the author a rare hardcopy of this article, which was included in a special supplement about the Muscle Shoals music industry. The Shoals Chamber of Commerce reprinted portions of the supplement on their website. See “Muscle Shoals Music,” http://www.shoalschamber.com/live/muscleshoalsmusic.html, accessed November 20, 2010. Also see Randy McNutt, Guitar Towns: A Journey to the Crossroads of Rock ’n’ Roll (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2002), 126. Director Freddy Camalier makes the “Singing River” myth and the general concept of water central to his 2013 documentary, Muscle Shoals (Magnolia Pictures, 2013); See Bernard Cresap, “The Muscle Shoals Frontier: Early Society and Culture in Lauderdale County,” Alabama Review 9 (July 1956): 188. Cresap’s study noted, “A scant concern for the fine arts may be attributed to crude frontier conditions, perhaps,” 212.
- Sheffield: City on the Bluff 1885–1985 (Sheffield, AL: Friends of Sheffield Public Library, 1985), 60; Preston J. Hubbard, “The Story of Muscle Shoals,” Current History (May 1958): 265.
- T. S. Stribling, The Store (New York: Literary Guild, 1932).
- Buddy Killen, By the Seat of My Pants (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1993), 56–58.
- Herston eventually moved to Nashville where he became a top session guitar player. During the 1960s, he then served as Vice President for United Artists Nashville operation, and helped to establish Capitol Records as a leader in country music. Herston served as the Music Director for the television show Hee Haw. In the 1970s he established a highly successful jingle writing company; I acquired these dates from an undated typed document printed on Tune Publishers Incorporated stationary found in the James Joiner file, located at the Alabama Music Hall of Fame (AMHF). The individual documents housed in folders at the AMHF are not numbered or indexed. The subject files are organized simply by last name (i.e., Jonier, James). Information found in Love Lifted Me, Bobby Denton’s autobiography, supports these dates. Other partners in Tune Records included Walter Stovall and Marvin Wilson. Bobby Denton, Love Lifted Me: A Story of Life, Love and Tragedy (Muscle Shoals, AL: Falling Star Publishing, 2009); Dexter Johnson, Jimmy Johnson’s uncle, built the first recording studio in his Sheffield garage in 1951.
- Denton, Love Lifted Me, 41; This information obtained from a photocopy of Tune Records’ check register, located in the “James Joiner” file at the Alabama Music Hall of Fame. In his autobiography, Denton incorrectly attributes Joe Heathcock as the engineer. The 1956 and 1957 Broadcasting Yearbook lists Bobby Lott as the chief engineer for WLAY. The yearbooks are accessible at the website, American Radio History, “Broadcasting Publications, Broadcasting Yearbooks: Directory of AM FM TV stations, regulations and suppliers from 1935 to 2010,” http://www.americanradiohistory.com/Broadcasting_Yearbook_Summary_of_Editions_Page.htm, originally accessed February 21, 2013.
- Denton retired from music after a few weeks on a fall tour sponsored by Clark.
- Bobby Denton interview with Christopher Reali, May 31, 2011. Unless indicated otherwise, all quotes by Denton are taken from this interview; Christopher S. Fuqua, Music Fell on Alabama: The Muscle Shoals Sound that Shook the World (Montgomery, AL: NewSouth Books, 2006), 30; Sherrill co-wrote “The Most Beautiful Girl,” “Stand By Your Man,” “Almost Persuaded,” and many others. His many production credits include “Behind Closed Doors” for Charlie Rich, “Stand By Your Man” for Tammy Wynette, and “He Stopped Loving Her Today” for George Jones; For more information about the history of the Muscle Shoals music industry, see Fuqua, Music Fell on Alabama; James Dickerson, Mojo Triangle: Birthplace of Country, Blues, Jazz and Rock ’n’ Roll (New York: Schirmer Trade Books, 2005); Peter Guralnick, Sweet Soul Music: Rhythm and Blues and the Southern Dream of Freedom (New York: Harper & Row, 1986. Reprint, Boston: BackBay Books, 1999).
- See Jane DeNeefe, Rocket City Rock & Soul (Charleston, SC: The History Press, 2011) for an ethnographically based history of the 1960s Huntsville music scene.
- For more information about the mixing of black and white soundscapes in the Shoals, see Reali, “Making Music in Muscle Shoals,” 186–227; and Les Back, “Out of Sight: Southern Music and the Coloring of Sound,” in Out of Whiteness: Color, Politics, and Culture, ed. Vron Ware and Les Back (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002), 227–253. For a 2015 source that addresses similar issues published after this article went to press, see Charles L. Hughes, Country Soul: Making Music and Making Race in the American South (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2015).
- For information about studio musicians working in the South during the 1950s and ’60s, see Roben Jones, Memphis Boys: The Story of American Studios (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2010); Tracey Laird, Louisiana Hayride: Radio and Roots Music Along the Red River (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2005); and Rob Bowman, Soulsville, U.S.A.: The Story of Stax Records (New York: Schirmer Books, 1997); The members of the next FAME house band (1964–1969), Jimmy Johnson, Roger Hawkins, Junior Lowe, David Hood, Dewey “Spooner” Oldham, and Barry Beckett, also performed in local bands; Norbert Putnam interview with Christopher Reali, June 10, 2011. Unless otherwise indicated, all quotes by Putnam are taken from this interview. For more information about the influence of rock ’n’ roll and r&b on southern teens, see Michael Bertrand, Race, Rock, and Elvis (Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2000).
- Barney Hoskyns, Say It One Time for the Brokenhearted: Country Soul in the American South (London: Bloomsbury, 1998), 95; “Jerry Carrigan Interview,” http://gracelandranders.dk/default.asp?page_id=166, accessed January 3, 2012.
- Spooner Oldham interview with Christopher Reali, June 2, 2011. Unless indicated, all quotes by Oldham are taken from this interview; Oldham commented that the pianist on Alexander’s 1962 recording of “Anna (Go To Him)” for Dial Records, likely Floyd Crammer, copied his original piano riff first recorded on the Spar demo; Richard Younger, Get a Shot of Rhythm and Blues: The Arthur Alexander Story (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2000), 34; “Sally Sue Brown” backed with “The Girl That Radiates Charm,” Judd S-878 1020, 1960.
- Alexander is the only songwriter to have his songs covered by The Beatles, the Rolling Stones, and Bob Dylan. The Beatles recorded “Anna (Go To Him)” in 1963; the Rolling Stones recorded “You Better Move On” in 1964; and Bob Dylan recorded “Sally Sue Brown” in 1988.
- Earl “Peanutt” Montgomery interview with Christopher Reali, May 27, 2011. Unless indicated otherwise, all quotes by Montgomery are from this interview. Montgomery acquired the nickname “Peanutt” while working at WOWL, a television station in the Shoals. Montgomery explained to me the odd spelling this way: “When I recorded for [the label] Tollie, I recorded under Peanutt Montgomery, III. And I told them put the third on there, I spelled it with two T’s. I said my grandpa was a Peanutt, my daddy was a Peanutt, and I’m the third one, that’s what I told them.”
- Jimmy Johnson phone interview with Christopher Reali, November 8, 2010. Unless indicated otherwise, all quotes by Johnson are taken from this interview.
- The “Nashville method,” also known as the Nashville Number System, uses numbers to represent scale degrees and their corresponding chord. This system allows for easy transposition to any key in order to accommodate the range of a vocalist. In the key of C, the numbers represent: C=1, D=2, E=3, F=4, G=5, A=6, B=7. For example, a progression labeled 1 1 4 5 and performed in the key of C would be C C F G; transposed to the key of G it would indicate G G C D.
- Hollie I. West, “The Stars are Falling on Alabama, They Dig Muscle Shoals,” Washington Post, February 15, 1970, K1; Hoskyns, Say It One Time, 106.
- Putnam, Briggs, and Carrigan would go on to become members of the “A-list” session musicians in Nashville during the mid to late 1960s and 1970s performing on and eventually producing numerous tracks; Because the Swampers were in such demand and the tracks they appeared on often became hits, they frequently negotiated to receive royalty payments in exchange for lower session fees; Glenn Stephens, “Watch Out Nashville, Muscle Shoals Says,” Tri-CitiesDaily (Florence, AL), February 20, 1977, 43.
- Randy Poe, Skydog: The Duane Allman Story (San Francisco: Backbeat Books, 2006), 88.
- Isaac Weeks, “White Guys: The Origin of the Muscle Shoals Sound, and a New Julian Assange Film,” Indy Week (Durham, NC), October 16, 2013, 33; FAME and Muscle Shoals Sound Studio (MSSS) continued to produce hits up through the end of the 1970s. The Swampers moved their studio in the late 1970s from 3614 Jackson Highway to an old Navy Reserve building located at 1000 Alabama Avenue. In 1985, they sold that facility to Malaco Records, a Jackson, Mississippi–based company. During the 1980s, Hall turned his attention to country music and publishing. Today, FAME still operates in its original location. The original MSSS was recently purchased by the Muscle Shoals Music Foundation, which is raising funds to restore the studio. The Shoals is currently home to several operating studios, including Noiseblock, owned by Gary Baker, a Grammy Award–winning songwriter.